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// 11 
// Story: Pearl's Travels 1: Hollow Shades 
// by Makitk 
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I woke up to a Changeling taking off out of the cubicle which was the room I'd been sleeping in, and watched them until they flew off out of sight. Turning my attention to the room proper again, I found three Changelings were left; one of which sleeping in the middle of the alcoves on a bed of green resin.

The other two were standing beside one another, and were shadowboxing with their forehooves while standing upright on their hindlegs. I guessed one of them to be Blaze; the Changeling who tried to teach brother and I how to push one another out of a ring, while the other was obviously my brother from the same batch as me, judging by the lack of holes in his legs.

He was fluttering his wings in an attempt to stay upright, while the other was standing a lot more solidly, which made me smile a little as it was obvious she was Blaze just from her stance. While I assumed other Changelings may have a similar body control as Blaze, she just added a bit of flair to it which came from her years of working in the entertainment business.

"I guess it's morning?" I offered up, and Blaze cast a glance in my direction.

"Yep. Get yourself some breakfast from the veins closest to you; we already ate," she stated, then continued with her training, with brother mimicking how she punched the air.

"Is he trying to turn back into a human or something," I wondered, moving a little on my mattress of resin until I got near to one of the veins on the wall near me, "what with you two standing upright like that?"

Brother snorted, almost lost his balance, and had to flutter his wings to remain standing. I had to wait with trying to feed until I got my laughter under control, much to brother's annoyance.

"You missed Breeze," brother threw my way. "She said she won't teach someone who sleeps through her visits."

Blaze punched him in the side, causing brother to fall over into his alcove.

"Don't listen to him;" she offered up, lifting one of her hind legs until she balanced on just the one - just to show off, "Breeze will be back later today. You're not going to do much in the way of transforming with that leg until that cast comes off."

"I figured, thanks," I offered, then sought out one of the green veins and carefully sank my fangs into it. A wicked taste filled my mouth as the nutrient paste leaked into it past my fangs - feeling a little like soft jell-o as it melted in my mouth.

The taste was not unlike that of certain mushrooms, or mouldy bread, and I was hesitant to swallow it.

"Spit out the first few sips. You're fairly low in the hall here, so there's a lot of old resin in there. Matron keeps forgetting to clean the veins down here," Blaze offered up, turning on her single hoof to face brother as he climbed out of his alcove again.

I spat my mouthful of resin out as close to a corner of the room as I could, took another draw of resin, and spat that out as well as it tasted about the same. The third mouthful was a lot sweeter than the first two, and it was starting to taste more like a good apple cider or non-alcoholic fruit juice than anything.

I cast a thankful glance at Blaze, but she was too busy evading brother's hooves as he tried to push her over to notice me.

I suckled idly on the vein, but I really didn't have to as gravity did most of the work for me here; the resin just continued to pour out of it into my mouth no matter if I suckled on it or not, and all I had to do was swallow it once my mouth filled up enough.

Burst, or Oval, had been right about it; it didn't warm me up or anything. The resin itself was room temperature, which in this cave system meant a few degrees below a human's body temperature. Even so it felt warmer than I had expected, and it slowly dawned on me why that was; Changelings were insectoids.

While humans were definitely warm-blooded, with insects this was a wholly different thing. And Changelings being a fictive species to begin with, even if I now was one myself, there was no telling what a normal body temperature for my new form was like.

It was most likely colder than a human's body temperature. How would we match up against the ponies, I wondered?

I cast my eyes on the sleeping Changeling near me and realized it must be Oval, considering I was told Breeze buzzed off for the moment. She had opted to turn her back to the room and had curled up a little on her mattress.

Her chitin plating shone almost like a blue mirror, reflecting the shadows of Blaze and brother training fighting techniques in the room, as well as our siblings flying overhead from time to time.

I idly wondered if my own chitin backplate reflected as much. If there was anything that could be said of us Changelings was that all drones looked alike. Male or female; we mostly looked like one uniform army of grey-skinned critters.

I could keep Blaze and brother apart from their mannerisms more than their looks, and most other Changelings looked the same to me as any other. I would probably not even be able to point myself out on a photo where I'd be among others like me, except maybe by the lack of holes in my legs.

I started to feel full, so I focused on forming a pair of soft, rubbery resin balls and used my tongue to lead them from my resin glands out to the holes I had poked in the veins. They washed right back into my mouth by the push of the resin, and it took me a bit of fiddling before I understood how to push them through the holes with my tongue so they would plug them from the inside.

I pulled away after the flow of resin stopped filling my mouth, and rolled over onto my back in the alcove, looking past the wall above me at the cavern's ceiling.

"Is it always this crowded in this outpost?" I asked out loud, and heard a pair of hooves impact with the floor a moment later.

Another set of hooves fell down, and a Changeling's head appeared in my view.

"You should come visit our main Hive some day, little sister," Blaze spoke, grinning down. "There are far more of us down there, and then there's all our siblings out in the field."

I stared up at her. "Burst told me you three were clutchlings, or something."

Blaze's eyes narrowed and she peered over to the sleeping Changeling in her alcove. "Clutchlings? I should kick her for that."

"Why?" I asked. "I'm a hatchling, right? So I guessed brother and I would be batchlings, but I'm the only one of my clutch."

"That's... one way of looking at it, I guess," Blaze agreed, moving away from me. I turned my head to watch her walk over to brother sitting in his alcove. "You two are from the same batch, yes, but there's no-one in our family who'd call you batchlings. We're all siblings of one another, unless we were born from a different Queen."

I pushed up into a sitting position, wincing as I put weight on my bad foreleg. "But brother and I weren't born from your Queen; we were transformed by your pods," I protested.

"But those pods were made by matrons who were born from our Queen," Blaze returned, sitting down next to brother since there were few other places she could sit at. "It's the same with us when we're hatched; the same matrons who cared for us have taken care of you."

"And that makes us siblings, then?" I asked, while noting brother inching away a little from Blaze.

"As good as," Blaze chuckled, then moved a foreleg up and around brother's withers to pull him in against her. "Little brother, I'd almost think you're scared of me, what with you trying to sneak away like that!"

"Ack, no!" brother protested, falling over onto Blaze's lap from her tug at him and struggling to get off it and the alcove onto his own four legs again.

Blaze laughed heartily, letting herself fall back into the alcove until she came to rest on the bare stone. I peered around me a bit, noting my own resin mattress was literally dissolving in front of my eyes and brother's had already disappeared fully.

"It really doesn't last long, does it?" I remarked as brother came to seek sanctuary in my alcove, sitting down to my left.

"The resin? A few hours, yeah," Blaze agreed, looking around herself. "The veins here are made from sturdier material, but the matrons keep quiet on how they make them. We drones can't make those veins. Our resin glands are different from theirs or some such. Ask Oval."

"Burst, you mean?" I suggested, to which I thought to see a sparkle in Blaze's eye.

"Oval, yeah," she nodded. "She doesn't mind either name, but Breeze and I have been calling her Oval for most of our lives now."

"Talking about Breeze," I started, but brother groaned and I cast a glance at him.

"You do a lot of it, sister," he remarked.

"There's a lot of things I want to learn about," I returned with a snort. "If you don't like it, get out of my alcove and sit down on the ground or something."

Blaze grinned at me. "You tell him."

Brother smirked at that. "Nah, I'm comfy here. Keep talking."

"So about Breeze," I started again, "Oval called her name out earlier last night and someone else seemed to take offense to it; "what about Breeze?" they shouted, but Oval stuck her tongue out at them."

Blaze grinned wider at hearing this. "Ah, that's an in-joke. Breeze went missing at some point. And we two, as her clutch sisters, were stuck hearing all sorts of stories about her while she was unable to defend herself. So every time someone brought her up, we'd jump at them and go "what about Breeze?" and they'd shut up."

I stared.

Blaze shrugged. "You should've been there, I guess. We're kinda protective of her. She may be the middle sister, but she gets in more trouble than Oval here."

"And she's the youngest then?" I queried.

"Yeah, although we hatched about at the same time," Blaze clarified. "Matron has a knack for figuring these things out, though."

"She's like a mother to you all, no?" I asked.

"In so much as we have mothers, yes," Blaze agreed, leaning back in the alcove. "I've seen pony mothers with their foals. They're not too far from how Matron treated us."